Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The Whore and the Artist: Two Novels Set In Renaissance Italy

Carrie from Books and Movies was so nice and generous to send me her ARC of The Creation of Eve when she heard I was excited about it. Sadly, however, I had some major issues with it from the start and just couldn't get into it.

The premise of the book sounds awesome--Sofonisba Anguissola, a real-life Renaissance painter whose work was praised by Michelangelo, falls in love and navigates the court of 16th-century Spain. I think the crux of all my problems with this book is that it reads like a novelized script--I could see the art and what was happening so clearly in my mind, but I think the author was so focused on setting the scene and giving us the feeling of being in a movie that she neglected to think in-depth about the motivations of the characters.

Basically, Sofonisba just doesn't seem to think like an artist the way, say, Alex from To the Hilt does. With Alex, you know he has a passion for art to the point that he would want to die if he wasn't painting. Sofonisba seems to treat art the way I do--which is to say, a fun and interesting hobby. She doesn't have a strong will or a fierce passion for it, which makes me wonder why the heck she's putting herself through the torture of trying to be a female artist when it would be much easier for her to do what her culture tells her she should be doing, getting married and having babies.

Secondly, I had a MAJOR issue with how her relationship with the sculptor, Tiberio, is set up. As far as I can tell, the entire impetus for her sleeping with him was that he gave her the tingly body parts. That's pretty weak motivation for doing the bumpin' nasty even in a romance novel, but for this novel I found it to be negligent and a bit insulting. I'm not saying her having sex out of wedlock is objectionable or unrealistic, but the stakes for Sofonisba are very high, risking her career and her and her family's honor; yet she sleeps with this guy anyway, apparently out of the blue and for no reason other than she's kinda sorta maybe attracted to him. HUH.

To my mind, this book should have been about a woman who's strong--or foolish--and brilliant enough to earn the respect and tutelage of Michelangelo, one of the most machismo artists in THE era of male bravura art. Instead, it's about a girl who falls wherever a man pushes her, be it into a career as an artist (her story of how she became an artist begins with her father noticing she draws well--she never mentions how she feels about it, as if it's incidental), a studio room where he wants to have sex with her, or a foreign court (where she languishes and waits for Tiberio to suggest they marry--way to be proactive, Wallpaper McPassive!), with nary a whimper of protest or personal opinion, even just to herself. And while we may not know much about the real Sofonisba, I'm pretty sure a woman who stayed single until she was in her late thirties, proposed to her second husband, and was called one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance DESPITE the fact that, no, she did not receive proper anatomy lessons (let's stop whining about that, please) would be a little more independent than that.

And don't even get me started on the historical inaccuracies.

The Botticelli Secret was another book I really wanted to like, but just couldn't get into. Although I did get farther with this one than with The Creation of Eve.

Here's another great premise for you: While posing as a model for Botticelli's Primavera, Luciana discovers there is a secret hidden in the painting. With the help of a young man named Guido who wants to be a monk, she travels to all the great cities of Renaissance Italy searching for the answers to the painting's hidden message. The back blurb describes it as a cross between The Da Vinci Code and The Birth of Venus (which quite honestly made me laugh; what will those crazy kids cross The Da Vinci Code with next????).

Could there be a more polar opposite character to Sofonisba than Luciana? This girl, who's about thirteen, is a prostitute living in poverty who is tough as nails, brimming with street smarts, and lewd, crude, and shameless. She should logically be a completely unappealing character, but she has a certain Artful Dodger-esque charm to her--and Luciana isn't the type to let anyone decide her fate. She's balanced out nicely by the wealthy, modest, and educated Guido. I'm just going to assume they sleep together at some point.

The only real problem I had with this book is that it was so long and the plot was so silly. I still have no idea what secret The Primavera contains, why Botticelli painted it (the secret, that is), or why Luciana and Guido were chasing it around. It was supposed to be because they thought that would protect them from people trying to kill them, but really THAT MAKES NO SENSE.

In the end it's all just an excuse to travel around Italy, anyway. I honestly wouldn't have had a problem with that if the book was shorter, but it wasn't and then it was due at the library so... that was the end of that.

I should mention that both of these novels might masquerade as YA, but are actually more geared for adult historical fiction.